ABS Light

[Capman2k]

So I went out wheelin' on Wednesday and got my truck almost totally covered in mud...

On my way home, and all day thursday, the ABS light was on... After I spent $15 and 20 minutes at the car wash, no more light...

Maybe an issue with mud or something???

Whadda y'all think?

 

[Ru Dawg]

I'm not an expert on this topic, but I have read some threads/posts about the speed sensors somewhere in the wheel assembly which can get dirty. I believe if you find & clean them it could fix your ABS light problem. Hopefully someone with more experience with this will chime in.
If the sensors came clean when you washed your truck, you may have to reset your truck's computer to clear the error code. Just disconnect your battery for about 10-15 minutes and reconnect.
Good luck man!

 

[Claus]

I experienced the ABS light thing as well. I was towing our sailboat on the interstate and around 450 miles into the trip the light came on. After that we had a couple of short pee & gas breaks but the ABS light would come on again right as we accellerated. Strangely the light didn't come on after we stayed overnight and hasn't come on since then, which included a 650 miles trip back with the boat.

So what does that really mean when the light is on? Breaks did work but I'm wondering if ABS would in that case not engage. In any case it's not something you want to see while doing high-speed towing.

Oh, and no. I didn't wash the truck.

 

[spta97]

From what I have read on the board, the ABS sensors can get dirty. From personal experience they can also fail. I had 2 of them die on me (covered under my warantee luckilly). The last one was going through a big puddle of water - no mud.

When the light is on (at least in my case) the ABS does not work. I wanted to see so I hit the brakes hard on a wet road and they locked up like crazy (seemed limited to the rear though but I can't be sure). Fortunately they didn't fail 10 minutes before because I would have rear eneded some jerk who decided to slam on his brakes at a green arrow in the pouring rain.

 

[Claus]

That doesn't give me a fuzzy feeling to hear that there is a potential that the ABS goes out at random times. Especially when recalling that I drove on a dry interstate at hight speeds pulling a trailer.

Is that death feature just part of the Explorer, Ford in general, or all cars?

 

[Capman2k]

It's been on all day today... And It's come on and gone off a few times since I originally posted... How can I check/replace the sensor? Is it an expensive part????

 

[Brandon1993Sport]

There's two parts to the front ABS system on the 93-94s. The sensor is a part of the spindle/knuckle. It's a flat round shiny metal part about the size of a nickle. If this gets really muddy I'm sure it could give a bad reading causing the ABS light to come on. Then there's the exciter ring on the rotor. It's on the inner side of the rotor and looks like a black spoked metal wheel mounted around the hub. If it has mud caked all inside of the spokes it also might cause a bad reading because the sensor couldn't detect the spokes through the mud. Maybe you could get a spray hose and get behind the tire/rim and spray around between the rotor and spindle. Hopefully that fixes it. If not, then you need to take off the rotor and see what the ring and sensor look like. Also check the wire that goes to the spindle, it's paired with the brake fluid line and goes to the sensor. You might have overextended it or something, dunno. Hope this helps